{"id":132780,"date":"2021-12-20T20:22:37","date_gmt":"2021-12-21T04:22:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/your-holiday-gifts-could-be-shipped-by-robot-semi-courtesy-of-ups-and-waymo"},"modified":"2021-12-20T20:22:37","modified_gmt":"2021-12-21T04:22:37","slug":"your-holiday-gifts-could-be-shipped-by-robot-semi-courtesy-of-ups-and-waymo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/your-holiday-gifts-could-be-shipped-by-robot-semi-courtesy-of-ups-and-waymo","title":{"rendered":"Your Holiday Gifts Could Be Shipped by Robot Semi, Courtesy of UPS and Waymo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/your-holiday-gifts-could-be-shipped-by-robot-semi-courtesy-of-ups-and-waymo2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Between a supply chain full of holes, labor shortages across various sectors of the economy, and rising inflation, it\u2019s shaping up to be a somewhat chaotic holiday season. Technology can\u2019t fix all of these problems\u2014or even most of them\u2014but it can help get holiday shipments from point A to point B faster, cheaper, and without as many humans involved. Waymo\u2019s partnership with UPS could mean some of your holiday gifts will be spending time in an autonomous truck on their way to you.<\/p>\n<p>Waymo (which started out as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009 and is still held by Alphabet, but raised $2.5 billion in its first outside <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/alphabet-waymo-raises-over-2-billion-first-outside-funding-round-2020-3#:~:text=The%20company%2C%20formed%20in%202016,taxi%20to%20a%20semi%20truck.\">funding round<\/a> in March of 2020) first <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.waymo.com\/2020\/01\/partnering-with-ups-to-deliver-on-our.html\">announced<\/a> a partnership with UPS in January 2020, in which Waymo Driver was used to help move packages between UPS stores in Phoenix and the UPS hub in Tempe. Waymo\u2019s Chrysler Pacifica minivans drove autonomously, but trained operators were on board to monitor the vehicles.<\/p>\n<p>Last week the two companies announced an <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.waymo.com\/2021\/11\/waymo-via-expands-partnership-with-ups.html\">expansion<\/a> of their existing partnership, saying they\u2019ll start autonomous trial runs using Class 8 trucks equipped with the fifth-generation Waymo Driver. They\u2019ll do deliveries for UPS\u2019s North American Air Freight unit between facilities in Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston. Waymo\u2019s initial route for its driverless <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2021\/06\/11\/waymo-self-driving-trucks-will-soon-start-moving-freight-across-texas\/\">cargo shipments<\/a> also ran between Houston and Fort Worth, which the company said is one of the most highly utilized freight corridors in the country. The route is around 260 miles long, much of that a straight shot on Interstate 45.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Between a supply chain full of holes, labor shortages across various sectors of the economy, and rising inflation, it\u2019s shaping up to be a somewhat chaotic holiday season. Technology can\u2019t fix all of these problems\u2014or even most of them\u2014but it can help get holiday shipments from point A to point B faster, cheaper, and without [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,6,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-robotics-ai","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}